You’re Either With The Terrorists, Or Against Them

Anyone who’s concerned that terrorism might be used as a form of political prosecution is effectively saying that terrorism shouldn’t be a crime, period.

Source

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The other day, I engaged in a brief, but spirited debate on X with

Leighton Woodhouse

, who has his own Substack. Let me start off by saying I don’t have any kind of beef with Woodhouse - I don’t know how he saw it, but I think we kept things mostly civil, a few potshots aside. I don’t agree with everything he says, because our motivating philosophies differ greatly, as you’ll see, but I also think he gets a lot right, which is why he’s gotten a mention here on our Substack a time or two.

I think he got this badly wrong, however:

The claim by the right from 15 minutes ago that they’re only against *illegal* immigration and have no problem with people who follow the rules was such a brazen lie it’s almost surreal.

To which I replied:

Almost everyone getting deported is either illegal or has some kind of issue w/their legal status.

You can argue the rules are being over-enforced, that’s fair. But to say people are being deported for no reason is in itself a lie.

Woodhouse’s concern was that the administration’s actions would eventually lead to U.S. citizens being deported, by accident or otherwise:

They already deported a legitimate asylum seeker with no criminal record to a country he's not from to lock him up in a supermax prison with the most dangerous gang members in the world with no due process and he may now be dead. Now they’re “joking” about doing the same to US citizens who blow up Teslas. If you can’t conceive of how this could happen to an American you're dealing with a failure of imagination.

To that, I answered:

If you don’t want a single mistake made, then logically, that stretches into not deporting anyone, period. We tried the “surgical” approach. It worked great, didn't it?

Blowing up Teslas for political reasons is terrorism.

We got into a broader argument over whether American citizens deserve to be stripped of their citizenship and imprisoned for engaging in acts of terrorism. I argued in favor, Woodhouse seemed against, seeing terrorism as merely a pretext for the government to abuse it’s authority.

I’m sensitive to the argument, though I admittedly less so than I would’ve been in the past. Government abuse of power is a major concern of mine, as my past writing reveals. However, the singular purpose of government is to protect society. If it fails to do this one job, government has no reason to exist. It’s purpose isn’t to provide free stuff, contrary to conventional wisdom. As such, in terms of risk management, I find it perfectly reasonable to accept the possibility that citizens could be mistakenly caught up in the dragnet than to not do anything about the problem at all.

I don’t say that flippantly. U.S. citizens being deported, even accidentally, would be a grave mistake. But, not only has that yet to happen, we tolerate all sorts of failures on the part of the government, which does most things poorly. Yet we tolerate it, either because we think nobody can do better, or because we grudgingly accept that the government should be responsible for doing certain things, at the risk of doing so imperfectly.

I’m going to save the immigration take for another time, focusing instead on terrorism. Woodhouse is a good-faith interlocutor for the most part, but he doesn’t seem to consider the recent rash of destruction and vandalism of Tesla vehicles and dealerships to be terrorism. I don’t think I’m mischaracterizing his argument, either.

In fact, Woodhouse seems to prefer that terrorism not be a specific category of crime:

Anyone who’s concerned that terrorism might be used as a form of political prosecution is effectively saying that terrorism shouldn’t be a crime, period. To present his argument more completely, Woodhouse thinks existing laws can more than sufficiently deal with crimes like blowing up Teslas for political reasons without needing it to be a put into a special category.

Whether terrorism should exist as a special category of crime is a separate debate altogether. What matters now is that terrorism isn’t only recognized by both sides as a special kind of crime, but more importantly, terrorism is in fact a form of warfare. The taboo which exists against terrorism, the reason why we even came up with the category in the first place, is because terrorism undermines political stability. If violence were an acceptable means of political engagement, we’d be in a constant state of civil war. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp.

Try applying Woodhouse’s logic to any terrorist attack. Imagine if, by some miracle, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 or the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 didn’t kill anyone. Should we then just treat it as simply property damage? The low likelihood that either attack wouldn’t have incurred fatalities is besides the point. Anyone who argues that terrorism isn’t a crime must concede that a bloodless WTC bombing or OKC bombing, implausible as it may be in reality, would merely be considered property damage, maybe attempted murder. You can lock people up for a long time for such crimes, no doubt.

But what about the more numerous, lower-level terrorist attacks? Terrorism isn’t just extremist groups setting off big bombs or flying planes into buildings. Politically motivated violence is literally what terrorism is. It’s a loaded term, yes, but it’s definition isn’t as nuanced as people make it out to be. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter is a meaningless phrase, because that plays no part in deciding whether a given society regards an act as terrorism or not. Really - are we going to say 9/11 wasn’t a terrorist attack because the 19 hijackers might’ve been freedom fighters to someone else? It’s a preposterous argument. It’s something for historians to squabble over, but I’d expect even academics to not be so confused about what political violence is or isn’t.

Woodhouse later invoked January 6, asking whether I’d agree they be charged as terrorists, stripped of their citizenships, and booted from the country. The problem with invoking January 6, I countered, is that it fell under the rubric of a protest. Protest is legal in this country, but more importantly, the Left has repeatedly upheld the precedent that violence is acceptable as long as it’s part of a protest. To my knowledge, not a single person involved in the 2020 George Floyd riots or the ongoing pro-Palestine riots have been charged with terrorism. If these are the rules of the game, it’s impossible to agree that the people involved in the January 6 protest, ill-advised as it was, deserve to be treated as terrorists.

George W. Bush was likely the worst president of my lifetime and it was considered pretty controversial when he said this, but I don’t think he was entirely wrong: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. There are always risks in thinking in absolutes, and I don’t think Leighton Woodhouse actually supports terrorists. However, if you elect to take it easy on them, if you choose to treat them like any other criminal, you’ll only breed more of them.

Most of the people vandalizing or destroying Teslas don’t see themselves as an American ISIS. They see themselves as patriots. They not only expect to get away with the crime, but they also expect to be able to defend themselves if need be in court. If treated as terrorists, the likelihood of a successful defense or light punishment goes down, because there’s no defense for terrorism whatsoever.

Most of these terrorists are Whites and better off than not. They’re not your prototypical terrorist, and again, they don’t see themselves as one. The only way to make them pay a price and to deter anyone else from doing the same is to treat and charge them as such. The prospect of being regarded the same way as some of history’s most hated people is terrifying to them. This is especially true when it comes to White upper-ish-class professional-types, for whom reputation and status is everything.

As I said earlier, I do understand concerns about government overreach and that this heavy-handed approach by the Trump administration could easily be abused if the leash isn’t held tightly. Trump and his policies are more or less teetering on the brink in terms of popularity; there’s not a lot of room for bad PR. At the same time, we’re at the point where trying to do thing the “right way” accomplishes nothing. We’ve been demanding immigration reform for decades. At some point, it’s either going to happen or it’s not. If it hasn’t happened through voting and asking nicely, it’s never going to, unless someone, like Trump, comes in and forces the issue in any way possible.

I’m not saying there won’t be downstream effects of these policies. There absolutely will be. But trying to do things the right way is likely to run into obstacles which will ensure four years go by with nothing having been changed. Meanwhile, the problem simply gets worse. When things come to a head - and they will, it eventually does - everyone will wonder why nothing was done about it the first time.

Woodhouse has been more consistent than most leftists when it comes to government abuse of power. Despite being a leftist, he’s more reality-based, which is why he’s not of the “Woke” variety. However, I think this argument between us reveals that all leftists ultimately emerge from the same foundation. The Left is concerned, obsessively so, with preventing abuse, with preventing any possible injustice, and enforcing fairness at any and all cost.

This is the fatal flaw of the Left. Noble as it all sounds, they’d rather our society be chaotic, disorderly, with criminals out on the streets, with millions streaming across the border, with no way to get them out, instead of risking the possibility a limited number of abuses, injustices, and cases of unfairness may occur. But public policy is never about the few - it’s about the many. This is the reality of governance, one which I don’t believe most Americans are ready for yet.

I don’t think there’s any forestalling it. But one thing that’s guaranteed to bring America to civil war’s front doorstep rather quickly is for terrorism to continue unchallenged. Remember: destroying property is a proxy for actual physical, person-to-person violence. It’s what people do when they feel they can’t actually harm someone directly, or they’re too cowardly to do so. We have no rights without property rights, but we definitely shouldn’t tolerate property destruction because not only is it disorderly, actual interpersonal violence is always lurking very close by.

When there’s no avoiding the inevitable, refusing to fight back at all isn’t a virtue.

Can’t Be Bothered With Any Of That

Some final thoughts before the big wrap-up.

First, Megan McArdle of The Washington Post says:

“This doesn’t affect me, because I’m not an immigrant, I’m a citizen”, you say, without pausing to think about why we have due process: which is to say, because the government makes mistakes.

Once more, I would’ve been perfectly sympathetic to this line of argumentation several years ago, if not in full agreement. One reason I’m no longer so, besides the country’s progressive descent into total disorder and the state’s unwillingness to do anything about it, is that Americans have already been subjected to an extra-judicial regime called “cancel culture” for years, for which there was no due process because, well, things like “racism,” “sexism,” and “xenophobia” aren’t crimes. Not real crimes, anyway.

Yet, transgressors were treated like criminals. In some cases, worse than. Criminals at least have the sympathy of many in the public and in government. Victims of cancel culture had no defenders, treated like total pariahs, their livelihoods destroyed, and all avenues for gainful living cut off. Eventually, people mercifully forget and the world turns, but the damage is done, the incident leaving an indelible mark on their lives. I can’t say everyone was perfectly faultless, but my point is we had no problem with people’s lives being destroyed over things which weren’t crimes. In many cases, the target of cancellation wasn’t even guilty of what they were being accused of.

So, I can’t say I’m really troubled too badly by what’s happening to foreigners and left-wing terrorists, even if it may potentially cross a line. At least, it’s not worthy of a moral panic.

Lastly, I watched an interview Stephen A. Smith had with Ben Shapiro recently. I’m not a fan of either, but I thought this was an absolute masterclass in how two men from opposing political viewpoints, in disagreement, should have a conversation without it devolving into a shouting match.

Watch when you have time:

It’s impressive, isn’t it? There are many lessons to heed. First, notice that Smith allows Shapiro to speak uninterrupted, letting him fully express and explain his viewpoint. Smith also isn’t afraid to point out areas of agreement and shared understanding, but more important, he’s willing to concede when he doesn’t have a viable comeback. He praises Shapiro throughout the conversation, which has the effect of relieving any tension which might be building up.

It’s how we should all have conversations. It might not be enough to throw us off the path of civil war we’re on, but we’ll be damned if we don’t try. Have these conversations with people you trust, whether you agree on anything or not.

Discussion time: what did you think of my debate with Leighton Woodhouse? Are you on Team Max or Team Leighton?

Talk about it in the comments. And if you’re on Team Leighton, feel free to unsubscribe from my blog (I’m kidding, I’m kidding!).

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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